FTI{8T JOUENEY, 



CHAPTER I, 



it was the middle of March. We expected sunny 

 spring weatlier on the Riviera, and yet it rained per- 

 sistently. Day and night we Iieard the rain beating 

 against tlie windows, now lieavily, now hghtly, but always 

 with wearisome monoton\- so that the hours seemed inter- 

 minaljle to us. We laid our books aside disheartened. 

 (3ur recreations lost interest. We grumbled bitterly 

 about the weather. So many had liurried southwards 

 in tlie confident anticipation of finding tlie much extolled 

 blue sk\' on the other side of the Alps ; and of seeing 

 the moonlight mirrored in the ^Midland Sea ; and now 

 all our hopes were blighted. I, who had often spent the 

 spring in Itah' before, regarded the situation with greater 

 equanimity. I knew that it often rained even in Italy 

 at this time of ■vxar. How could the fields and gardens 

 of Itah' bear fruit if they were not watered in spring 



